Carte Blanche
by sss979
Summary: The Doctor offers River carte blanche (well, nearly) on anything she wants to know about him.


**CARTE BLANCHE**

**The Doctor offers River carte blanche (well, nearly) on anything she wants to know about him.**

**A/N: Cowritten with Thagrrrl79 as a character exploration of an older (early Series 7) Doctor with a younger (studying for her master's degree) River. Nearly everything described in this conversation is greatly expounded on either in lesser-known canon or in a book I am currently working on. If you're questioning where to find any of it, just ask and I'll be happy to point you in the right direction to see/hear/read the whole story. :) **

She was amazed by just how natural - how _right _- it felt to lie next to him. Not quite as surprised as she'd been the first time, when she realized how little she really knew him... and how well he seemed to know her. "Seems our time streams flow in opposite directions," he'd told her. "The more I know you, the less you know me. And vice versa, so you might as well get used to it." That was shortly before she'd fallen into bed with him, and without even putting up much of a fight - a point in fact that still irritated her a bit when she thought too much about it. She was not easy; she never had been. But he knew how to push her buttons. All of them.

At first she had feared the attraction was a symptom of her research and obsession. But it was so much more than that. He was a bit cocky and a bit dangerous - at least, she assumed that not _everything _she'd been told about him was a lie. Both of those things certainly intrigued her. And when he'd shown up in the middle of her Master's studies, after six years without a single trace, her curiosity was insatiable. After all, she'd spent six years studying the legends and rumors surrounding his existence - what little of it there was, at least. He was something of a ghost, and knowing all that she could know from the pages of tabloids and eyewitness retellings hardly told her who he _really _was.

But it had been almost a year now of his coming and going at irregular intervals. Her curiosity had long ago passed the point of professionalism. All she had read and studied and researched would have led her to believe he held the universe and all its creatures like a puppet on a string. But that couldn't be right. No man could be so powerful, so benevolent, and so undamaged by the type of pain and loss that he would never want to throw up his hands in resignation and say, "Damn it all to hell." The man of the legends was a fairy tale - a white knight in shining armor. The man, she knew by the depth and age she could sometimes see in his eyes when the light caught him just right, was far more complicated than that.

"Tell me something I don't know," she whispered as she rested her head on his shoulder, her fingertips trailing lightly over the light hairs on his chest.

"Hmm?"

She smiled at the soft sound from his throat and snuggled a bit closer to him under the warmth of the blankets. The full skin-on-skin contact reminded her of just how perfect their bodies seemed to fit together.

"Tell me something I'll never find in the history books. Something about you that no one knows."

"Like what?"

"Well, if I knew, I wouldn't be asking."

He smiled, raking his dull nails lightly across her scalp as he held her to gently. But he didn't answer. At least, not right away. Finally, he took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling beneath her before he turned onto his side and propped his head up with his elbow.

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything?" she asked, curious.

"As long as it doesn't break any rules, yes."

She knew the rules he was referring to, and she was perfectly happy to remain within those parameters. She didn't really want to know about her own future, anyway.

"Would you be honest?"

He hesitated on that question, studying her with a curiosity of his own. "If I'm not inclined to be honest, I won't answer at all." He touched his fingertip to her nose. "But _no _using that to get answers to yes or no questions you know I don't want to answer."

She smiled. "I thought you said you'd answer anything that didn't break the rules."  
"I did. And I will."

"Alright, then. Do you have an actual _name_?"

"Anything _except _that."

She raised a brow. "Why is that such a secret?"

"Answering that question would fall under the category of 'things in your future'. Off limits. Next question."

She paused, not sure how to continue for a moment. But in spite of his cagey words and tone, he was smiling at her, his fingertips tracing light patterns on her stomach. She studied him for a long moment as she thought of all the questions that had swirled in her head when she tried to connect the dots of his life. But just now, most of those questions seemed moot. She didn't want to interview him. She wanted to _know _him.

"What do you remember of your childhood?" she finally asked. "_Can _you remember anything from your childhood? Eleven hundred years was a very long time ago."

"Of course I can remember," he answered her, playfully indignant. "Eleven hundred years is nothing, I once knew a Time Lord who was over seven thousand years old and only in his eighth regeneration."

She smiled, but said nothing, giving him a chance to consider the question. She wasn't even sure he realized how nicely he'd avoided it, or that she wasn't going to fall for a random change of conversation.

"There's not much to tell, honestly," he finally said. " About when I was a child. It wasn't very memorable. I read a lot of books, did a lot of staring at the sky. A lot of waiting, always wishing I was just a few years older."

"That sounds incredibly boring for someone who travels in time and space."

He smiled knowingly. "The way I see it, I did enough sitting in one place to last all my regenerations."

"Didn't you have any friends? Siblings?"

"No, not really. In the Academy, yes, but that's a different story altogether. And I did have a brother, technically - half-brother on my mother's side - though he and I were so far apart in age and we had _none_ of the same interests..."

"So for all intents and purposes, you're an only child." She smirked. "That explains a lot."

"Oi!"

She smiled and laughed. Genuinely laughed - something she hadn't done in a long time. "What? It's something we have in common! To the best of my knowledge, I don't have any siblings."

"Hmm." He glanced away, and she could see his mind wandering over the memories. "You know, I think all the time I was stuck on Gallifrey, I only talked to him four, maybe five times. _Heard _a lot about him, from tutors and professors. Suppose that made me want to know him even less."

"What did you study?"

"Thermodynamics."

She quirked an eyebrow in surprise. "Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Why not?"

"The infinite knowledge of the Time Lords and you chose to study something you could specialize in on 20th century Earth?"

He shrugged.

"I guess I just figured you'd study something like theoretical physics or something along those lines. But thermodynamics?"

"It was easy and I was too bored to care."

"Why not find something that didn't bore you, then?"

"Gallifrey bored me. The whole of Time Lord society bored me. My only interest in the Academy at all was to learn how to pilot a Tardis and - more importantly - how to _get _one."

"So thermodynamics wasn't _all _you studied, then."

"No, of course not. I studied everything that every Time Lord was required to know. Cultural philosophy, language, history and geography of most of the known universe... And the science. Theoretical physics was the easiest of it, I think. Neurochemistry, relative time-spatial dynamics... Paradoxical theory gave me fits."

"Seems like something that might in general. It's in the name."

"I don't like theories, as a rule. I like numbers; give me numbers. Or give me people without numbers. Theories and guesses are for people and cultures and philosophy, not for science. Science should be about numbers and facts and people... people should _never _be about numbers and facts."

She smiled, reaching up to brush back the fringe of hair that made him look like a twelve-year-old when it hung in his eyes that way. He brought his quiet little tangent to a close and nuzzled her hand gently, lovingly. It made her smile widen. He was waiting for the next question.

"You said you had friends in school. Who were they? How close were you?"

He paused. "There was a lot of competition in the Academy, really, and that was all a bit much for me. I never really appreciated the thrill of winning when there was no reward I particularly wanted and I just couldn't get a rush out of making the other guy lose when he wanted it so much more than I did. Bit sadistic, really. But not wanting in on that competition made it a little hard to make friends. Except for my roommate. He and I got on just fine, actually. Right up until the point that I left Gallifrey."

"What happened?"

He shrugged. "I'd spent half a century staring at the stars and wishing I could be free to explore them. The moment I got the chance, there was never really any second thought about it."

"But what happened with your friend? Did you just lose touch?"

"For a while. He showed up again, two hundred years or so later, working for a race of rather unpleasant people hell bent on subjugating lesser civilizations. We didn't exactly rekindle our friendship. My choice, really. To be fair, he did sort of try. I think it was the whole subjugating the galaxy bit that sort of put a damper on the whole thing."

"Oh."

She knew there was more to the story. She could see it in the way he was avoiding her gaze. But it seemed like something he didn't want to talk about, even if he wasn't refusing to do. She decided to change the subject.

"So, the TARDIS, how'd you come upon that? Her? What's the proper way to address it?"

"Well, she is sentient. And how I found her is another boring story, really. Or, rather, a very short one. Her door was unlocked, I went inside, we ran away."

"You..." She wasn't sure why that simple admission shocked her, but it did. "You mean you stole her?"

"Borrowed."

A smile twitched at her lips. "Borrowing implies intent to return."

"Never got around to it."

"No, apparently not."

He smiled as he collapsed his arm and rested his head again, sliding one arm across her and pulling her closer. She turned into him and he hugged her close as she tucked her head under his chin. She could definitely get used to this. Love it, even. The warmth and intimacy... His protective embrace...

Another question occurred to her. "I realize this may be a silly question, but... Have you ever been in love before?"

This question, finally, made him hesitate - a hesitation which made her tense slightly, afraid she'd crossed a line she didn't know existed. He had said she could ask him anything. But there were some things best not remembered, let alone discussed. She wasn't sure, but it was entirely possible she'd just found one of them.

"Yes," he finally said, his whisper barely loud enough to disturb the silence around them. "Twice, actually. Not including..."

He trailed off. Looking up at him, she pulled her arm free so she could brush his hair back from his face again. "It's okay if you don't want to talk about it."

"No, it's alright," he said quietly. But he didn't sound convinced. "It's been a long time. They're all... long gone, now. One of them isn't even in this universe anymore. Well... she wasn't. When she died. Time is in flux, ever-changing, completely navigable and that's true but... it's a lot easier to think that the people I knew in previous lives are dead and gone now. It makes it hurt less, somehow."

She considered it quietly. That was an interesting way of looking at things. Her "childhood" in Ledworth and her current life couldn't be much further apart, but the friends she'd had in both had remained constant. True, she didn't actually _see _her mother and father now, but she knew they were alive. The Doctor still travelled with them, in fact.

"I can't pretend to know what it's like to lose someone you love," she admitted quietly.

He gave her a tight smile. "Yeah."

Smiling back, she ran her fingers down his cheek in a comforting gesture. "Tell me about them. Please."

He gave her a sort of sad half-smile. "I wouldn't know where to start."

"Start at the beginning."

"Puppy love."

She chuckled. "You?"

"I was young and stupid, she was pretty and foreign."

"Foreign?"

"Human. It was infatuation, really. Not love."

"Love came later?"

"Not with her."

"With who, then?"

He paused, and she watched as his eyes grew a bit distant. "I had a whole family, once. A very long time ago..."

"Oh?"

"Two little girls. Their mother was..." He laughed quietly as he shook his head. "She killed me once."

At that, River laughed. "She what?"

He looked down at River with a smile and his fingertips lightly over her lips. "You did the same thing."

"That wasn't my fault; I was brainwashed."

"Yes, you were." His smile broadened as he pulled her closer and kissed her forehead lovingly.

"And I brought you back."

"Yes, you did."

"So... two little girls, mother who killed you frequently..."

He laughed. "Well, when you put it like _that_..."

"I've already gotten a taste of how infuriating you can be. If she was actually with you long enough to start a family, I'm not sure I could blame her."

"Nah, she killed me long before then."

"Was she brainwashed, too?"

"No, she was just... very brave."

River blinked. That wasn't the adjective she'd been expecting.

"Brave enough to kill me and actually... she did it more than once, come to think of it."

"So you have a habit of falling in love with women who want you dead?"

He smirked. "She didn't want me dead; that was the whole point. She did it because it was the only way to save me. Of course, I'm not sure she knew that at the time. She did it because... well, because I asked her to. Because I really wanted her to do it and because she was the only one who could. The only one brave enough."

River didn't speak as he paused for a long moment, his smile fading as his thoughts wandered.

"She was a paradox," he finally continued. "She should've died, the day I met her. A fixed point in time. But I saved her life. I altered history."

"Oh, you naughty boy!"

"Don't worry, I paid for it."

"How so?"

"Exile."

She raised a brow, questioningly.

"Not only from Gallifrey but from the entire _universe _Gallifrey was part of. Her existence created a tear in the fabric of time. It shouldn't have been as serious as it was but... well, things happen. As it turned out, I ended up wandering around in a universe of anti-time for who knows how long, feeling like someone had ripped one of my hearts out of my chest... A universe without time is no place for a Time Lord."

Her eyes were wide with surprise and wonder. "Anti-time?"

"Difficult to explain."

She suppressed her curiosity by sheer force of will. "Another time, then. I still want to hear about this woman who killed you. And you still had a family with her, after? How many regenerations did she cost you?"

"None." He smiled. "That's the really incredible part."

She openly gaped before she caught herself and snapped her mouth shut. "But...how?"

"To be honest, I was never quite sure." He paused. "She put a sword through me, right between my hearts. I felt myself die. Felt my mind drift into the APCNet. But then I came back. As if she hadn't killed me, but only the thing inside of me. I still had the scar, though. I carried that scar until I regenerated..."

"Wow." Slowly, River contained her wonder. She found herself smirking at the mere thought of someone who would come at the Doctor with a sword. "She didn't fool around, did she?"

He chuckled, then let the silence settle again. River's smirk faded as she played out the rest of the scene in her mind. The woman hadn't just come at him... If what he was saying was true, she actually plunged that sword into his chest. River thought, just for a moment, about how that must have felt. Assuming the woman had loved him even half as much as he loved her, to look him in the eye and kill him, to watch his blood run in such an untidy death and to know that he was fading away in pain because of something she had done... It was no wonder he had called her brave.

"She was, perhaps, the bravest human I have ever known. And that... is saying a lot."

River nodded slowly in agreement. She couldn't imagine being faced with a choice like that. To kill the Doctor, simply because he wanted her to do...

"How else did she kill you?" she asked. "You said it happened more than once. Why? I assume she had a very good reason."

"Well... the other time I remember off the top of my head, she cut my throat." His voice was lighter again, almost conversational. "Wasn't crazy about the idea, mind you, I think it was a bit more blood than she cared to feel on her hands especially when _feeling_ was one of the few senses we had left in that place. Horrible place - a world of complete sensory deprivation: no time, can't see, can't smell, can't taste, barely able to feel touch... Not my finest moment. I didn't really die there, at least I don't think I did. But I easily could have. Had to... show a sentient sound creature my vocal chords."

"My God!"

"Yeah, nasty stuff, not very pleasant. Glad there's no chance of ever visiting that place again."

"Was that in that anti-time place?"

"Yes."

She shuddered. "Alright, so enough about death, what about life?"

"What about it?"

"Your children. Your family."

"Ah, yes, children. Julia and India. They lived with their mother on Earth. I came and went. The one time in all my lives that I felt like I really had a home. Other than the Tardis, I mean."

"They were half Time Lord then?"

"Sort of. India was. Julia... she was a bit more complicated. They were six and three years old when they..."

He cut off abruptly, and swallowed. Seeing the flash of pain in his eyes, she cupped her hand on his cheek. "You lost them, didn't you?"

He smiled sadly and lowered his eyes. "Like I said. It was all a very long time ago."

Leaning in, she kissed him lightly, softly. "And like I said, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to do."

He returned the kiss, and pursued another before pulling her close again and setting his chin on top of her head. "You should sleep." He smirked slightly. "You may be part Gallifreyan, but you sleep like a human. And you have classes in the morning."

She laughed slightly. "What does that mean?"

"It means you need far more hours than I ever did."

"I'm fine," she protested, although she couldn't quite suppress a yawn.

He chuckled softly. "Of course you are."

He stroked his hand slowly up and down her back, from her shoulders to the base of her spine. She shivered as she smiled, and instinctively curled into him more.

"Really, I'm wide awake," she lied.

He tipped his head down until his lips rested against her ear and whispered softly. "Shhhh..."

She tried to protest again, but she suddenly realized just how tired she was. "Will you stay, Doctor?"

"For a little while," he whispered back, dulled nails still scratching her back lightly. "At least until morning. If you like."

"Yes."

Another soft kiss on her brow, and she could feel herself relaxing into the warmth and safety of his arms. Sighing deeply, she let her eyes slide closed and slowly drifted into a deep, restful sleep.


End file.
